Web retailing adoption: exploring the nature of internet users Web retailing behaviour
Introduction
In recent times the Internet has generated an enormous level of excitement, where like no other technology it has captivated the media's, general public's and marketers (academicians) attention. There are many reasons given for the growth of Internet usage (not specifically retailing) over recent times, including for example, its size as a source of information, increasingly becoming much more user friendly, and it is increasingly becoming more accessible and less expensive (Bonn et al., 1999). This is also coupled for example, in Australia with growing computer ownership and usage in general. The increase in the number of Australian households with computers increased from 2 million (31%) in 1996 to 3.5 million in 2000 (A.B (1999), A.B (2000)), greatly increasing the opportunity of Internet and Web access. To achieve universal availability of the Internet, governments have invested billions of dollars into school Internet access (Fitzgerald, 1997) and an additional US$300 million for the exclusive university based Internet2 (Von SchWeber, 1998). However, research indicates that 81% of those that browse Web sites for goods and services, do not make online purchases (Gupta, 1996; GVU, 1997), and while many Web users are motivated to start a Web purchase transaction, 75% discontinue (cancel) the transaction (termed abandoning their shopping cart) (BizRate, 1999). This implies that Web users are identifying attractive shopping opportunities on the Web, but there are barriers and other concerns, preventing the purchase being completed. Of greater concern to Web retailers, should be the fact that 80% of Web users do not revisit Web sites (NVision, 1999), implying that in one visitation or browsing activity the Web retailer must inform, impress and convince the Web user that this Web site is worth an immediate shopping purchase.
However, it is important to also remember that the World Wide Web is not the first non-store environment to be used for retailing exchanges. According to Korgaonkar (1984), the non-store retailing environment covers the distribution channels of mail order selling, telephone selling, catalogue showrooms, door-to-door selling, vending machines, and interactive cable television. Add to this videotex (Shim and Mahoney, 1991) and now Web shopping, the consumer has at least eight retail channels available to them as we move into the 21st century. This allows enormous and varied opportunities to purchase goods and services outside the traditional bricks and mortar retail establishments.
In the past 50 years researchers have attempted to profile impressions and characteristics of non-store shoppers. A comparison of early electronic shoppers and those using print base environments indicated that Telephone/Electronic Shoppers believe it is easy to use electronic shopping, have slightly lower education levels than non-videotex shoppers, are less concerned with convenience for shopping, are recreational shoppers and are shopping innovators (Shim and Mahoney, 1991). Whereas, Catalogue/Mail Order Shoppers, enjoy shopping less than those that did not shop with catalogues (economic shoppers), are more price sensitive, place a high importance on convenience and spend less time per trip shopping than non-catalogue (Korgaonkar, 1981; Shim and Drake, 1990a). In many respects the two groups of non-store shoppers are almost an antithesis of each other.
Television shopping is the last retailing milestone before the advent of the Web. Donthu and Gilliland (1996) found that television infomercial shoppers differed from non-shoppers in that they are more shopping convenience oriented, more price conscious, more innovative, more impulsive in shopping and have greater risk acceptance, whilst also holding a negative attitude towards shopping in general. Television shoppers are similar to the telephone/videotex shoppers in their higher level of innovativeness.
Selling products and services via the Web is argued to have enormous potential. However, as yet there is much unrealized potential and more work needs to be done to further our understanding of this dynamic and developing retail medium. In general there are two recurring themes found in the literature, firstly, focusing on the interaction of Web and consumers in the context of using the medium to market and communicate with consumers (Peterson et al., 1997; Phau and Poon, 2000), and secondly, focusing on the social, political and communication issues of individuals as social beings (Maignan and Lukas, 1997; Venkatesh, 1998).
The focus in this study is on the first theme, that of marketing and consumer behaviour. On this, it is sufficient to say that increasing numbers of businesses are investing substantial resources into developing online marketing activities directed towards their markets and correspondingly, consumer usage of the Web is increasing, although not as rapidly as many predictions would have had us believe or business would like. The collision of these two key forces (marketers and consumers) provide exciting research opportunities.
Section snippets
Technology acceptance model
Considered an influential research model in the IT, IS fields, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1993) provides an informative representation of the mechanisms by which design choices influence user acceptance of information technology (Chau, 1996). TAM has proven to be helpful in applied contexts for forecasting and evaluating user acceptance of information technology and attempts to explain and predict the determinants of individual behaviour toward a given system which is system
TAM and the World Wide Web
TRA has been used to model consumer behaviour by evaluating consumer attitudes and beliefs (Litvin and MacLaurin, 2001). Using TRA as its theoretical foundation, TAM attempts to both explain and predict the determinants of individual behaviour toward a given system which is exhibited as system usage/adoption (Agarwal and Prasad, 1999; Venkatesh and Davis, 2000). This evolution of TRA into TAM is particularly important for the commerce that uses information system based environments such as the
Research design
To collect the data, a self-completed, Web based, survey was developed. The survey was designed via an iterative process that has been adopted by others in consumer behaviour research for generating items from the literature, submitting the initial pool to expert judges and focus groups and then pre-testing the instrument prior to final administration (Converse and Presser, 1986; O’Cass, 2000; Zaichkowsky, 1985). On the basis of items used in the literature and the definitions established in
Constructs
The measure for attitude towards using the Web for retailing/purchasing, consisted of four items adopted from (Taylor and Todd, 1995a) using a seven point semantic differential scales with bipolar labels from Very Bad to Very Good, Very Foolish to Very Wise, Very Unattractive to Very Attractive and Very Unpleasant to Very Pleasant. The perceived usefulness scale was also adopted from Segars and Grover (1993) to measure Internet user's beliefs regarding the usefulness of the Web for retail
Preliminary results
Initial analysis of the data indicated that 39.3% of the respondents were female and 60.7 male, ages ranged between 16 and 68 years with 12.8% of respondents 25 years and under, 28.2% between 26 and 35 years old, 30.3% aged 36–45 years old, 18.4% aged between 46 and 55 and 10.3% over 56 years of age; 48.5% of Internet users had not made WEB purchases and 51.5% had. Approximately 19% of respondents had been using the Internet for 2 years or less, 25% between 2 and 3 years, 23% between 3 and 4
Measurement and structural model evaluation
Due to sample size and stringent distributional assumptions required by the more well known methods such as LISREL it was decided to use the partial least squares (PLS) estimation procedure to evaluate the theoretical hypotheses (Lohmöeller, 1981; Fornell and Cha, 1994; Wold, 1981). PLS is a general technique for estimating path models involving latent constructs indirectly observed by multiple indicators (O’Cass, 2001). It was developed by Wold (1981) to avoid the necessity of large sample
Discussion
There are many reasons given for the growth of Internet usage over recent times. Of particular importance to marketers has been the growth of the WEB component. It is increasingly becoming much more user friendly, and it is also now more accessible and less expensive than previously (Bonn et al., 1999). This is also coupled for example in Australia with growing computer ownership and usage in general.
As indicated by Shim and Drake (1990a) past research on non-store shopping has made an
Implications
Marketers and WEB retailers need to focus on Internet users attitudes as a strong mechanism to move Internet users to adopt the WEB for retail usage. To create positive attitudes they should focus on creating strong perceptions that the WEB is useful for retail activity and easy to use. Also to ensure that they see it as useful and guarantee that they are satisfied with WEB sites, communicate its compatibility with system usage requirements, targeting shopping needs. They should also reconsider
Limitations and future research
It is important to remember that while much research, including the present provide valuable insights into why consumers are using the WEB for retail behaviour, there is still much to be done however. It is hope that this study has gone some way to shedding light into why some Internet users adopt the WEB for retail patronage and others do not. However, much still remains to be done in this area, such as refining the measures and constructs used here. Also, we need to investigate the
Conclusion
This study started with the premise that it was important to understand the consumer characteristics that impel Internet users to adopt the WEB for retail/purchase behaviour. It is important to understand consumer behaviour in this environment as at present our understanding is limited because WEB retail usage (e-shopping, e-tailing) is just beginning to penetrate mass markets in Australia and other developed nations around the world. As this commercial and social phenomenon grows, researchers
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